By Our Reporter
SHILLONG, May 23: The Returning Officer of Shillong parliamentary constituency, SC Sadhu on Thursday said prohibitory orders will be issued restricting processions, victory rallies or celebrations for 48 hours after the close of counting of votes on June 4.
After holding a meeting with the representatives of various political parties on Thursday, Sadhu told reporters the prohibitory orders will be enforced till 4 pm of June 6.
He said the decision on prohibitory orders was made as victory rallies and processions will disrupt peace and may create law and order problems.
“We apprised the political parties that this was needed for the maintenance of law and order in the district. They agreed to this proposal,” Sadhu, who is also the Deputy Commissioner of East Khasi Hills district, said.
He said the political parties have been asked to go by official counting trends and not by any other counting trends in order to avoid confusion in terms of the data.
He said there were law and order incidents in East Khasi Hills as well as some other districts immediately after the votes of Assembly elections were counted due to communication gaps.
He said there will be two counting centres in East Khasi Hills, one at Polo ground and the other at Sohra.
Sadhu said the votes will be counted in seven districts including East Khasi Hills. He added that the votes of 15 of the 36 Assembly segments falling under the Shillong Lok Sabha seat will be counted in Shillong.
“But the postal ballots from the seven districts will be counted only in East Khasi Hills. They will be counted at Polo. There are roughly around 5,000 plus postal ballots which will be counted,” the RO said.
According to him, they are making law and order arrangements in coordination with the police. All security procedures have been undertaken as per the Election Commission of India protocol, he added.
“Seamless communication channels have been established so that there is no disturbance in terms of flow of information. We have set up a separate media room to allow media persons from different organisations to get the live feed so that there is no confusion in terms of the data,” Sadhu said.
To a query, he said they are keeping a timeline that they should be able to declare the results by 4 pm to 5 pm.
“It is going to take time since we will have to count five VPPAT machines for each Assembly segment. Counting of postal ballots will also take some time,” he said.